


Idol

by Bhelryss



Series: fegenweek2018 [3]
Category: Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones
Genre: Gen, fegenweek, it's my bullshit, prompt: mentor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-10
Updated: 2018-01-10
Packaged: 2019-03-03 00:06:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 996
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13329309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bhelryss/pseuds/Bhelryss
Summary: FEGenwek, Day 5: MentorSelena is the first female general in Magvel's known history. She is a mentor to many, though she knows only few personally. Vanessa looks up to and idolizes this woman, the Fluorspar of Grado. She is someone to look up to, someone to aspire to be.





	Idol

Vanessa watches Syrene go into the army five years before she will be old enough to enlist. She sees Syrene come back with strong arms and legs and a look in her eyes that captivates. (Vanessa starts softening her parents up for her inevitable enlistment early.) Every chance she gets, Vanessa sits in her sister’s rooms and listens to her describe training and drills and the way pegasi look in the early dawn.

The first thing Vanessa learns as a trainee knight, is that the highest she will ever rise is captain. No one ever says it in words, but she has eyes. The king commands, his generals (all men) obey, and their subordinates (also men) give out orders to their subordinates (men), who speak to the captains (men, except for the pegasi corps, whose numbers and commanders are only women), who speak to the soldiers. 

Syrene has already said she wants to be a captain, one of the elite of the pegasus knights. She’s a junior knight, already well on her way to earning command, and Vanessa looks at her options with her ambitious eyes and a yearning heart and is discouraged. She wants better than that, though she’s too young and angry to put it any other way except by planting her feet and stubbornly yelling, “I don’t want to answer to fuddy duddy dudes my entire life!” 

She complains with her fellow trainees, though they don’t really see her problem. They don’t really want anything except a glamorous knighthood, with princes and princesses and heroism, and a pegasus. Vanessa thinks them all short-sighted, even though she does enjoy talking to them. They just don’t understand. (Vanessa doesn’t think anyone understands.)

Despite that though, she still likes training. Likes looking at the unpaired pegasi with her sister trainees, and trying to imagine which one will choose her. She has her eyes on an enormous stallion named Dexter, who has not chosen a rider in a decade, after his knight was killed by an extraordinary archer’s shot. (It’s sort of just her ambition talking. She wants him to choose her, she wants to be in charge, she wants more than what a second daughter likely has any right to want.)

Gossip trickles down to trainees slowly. Which is probably why Vanessa is almost into her junior knighthood, so close to her choosing she can practically taste the feathers in her mouth, before she hears about the Fluorspar. (An unfortunate, but inevitable, side effect of being pegasus knights, is that feathers get everywhere. Everywhere.) Vanessa hangs around the mess hall with open ears and a million questions that tangle on themselves and fail to be voiced.

(Is the Fluorspar really a woman? Vanessa wants to ask. Everyone seems to agree that she is. And she’s really one of the Precious Gems of Grado? She wants to know. Everyone swears up and down it’s not a mistake. She’s really real, and she has real duties that a Real General would have? Vanessa wants to beg. As far as she can tell, as far as she can hear. That answer is also yes.)

It’s like a bolt of lightning out of the clear blue sky. She thinks on that information for an eternity, thinking in her head  _ General Selena Fluorspar _ over and over and over. A woman, and a general, and a knight, and  _ respected _ . That’s what she wants, she realizes, nervous for her upcoming choosing. That’s what she wants. General Vanessa, she thinks with hearts in her eyes and butterflies in her stomach, right hand to King Innes. 

“I’m going to be a general.” Vanessa says firmly to her fellow almost-knights. They don’t laugh at her, but they obviously don’t believe her. Grado is far away, Emperor Vigarde is odd, no one with any sense will trust a woman in command for long - these are all things that their current commanders are saying now. She doesn’t care though, she brushes these things off with the spark of a predator who has caught the scent of blood. It is possible, she knows now. “I will be.” she insists.

She’s seen Prince Innes. He is nothing if not a man who values merit. If she is the best, the promotions will come to her. If she is valuable, her dream will be reality. So she ignores their doubts, and the naysayers in her chain of command, and Vanessa devotes herself to her training. She wants to be the best. She wants to catch Innes’ attention, so that he sees her and her dedication, her skill.

Vanessa wants nothing more than to stand on an even footing with the Fluorspar, extend a hand to shake, and thank her for being a light in the dark. She sweats for that future, where she can turn to Selena Fluorspar and say, “Thanks to you, I knew I could do this. Thank you.  _ Thank you _ , for being the first.” 

Every opportunity, Vanessa asks older knights if they’ve heard more stories about her. Fuel for the fires of her ambition. Every success for the Fluorspar is a success that makes Vanessa’s way easier to keep. A victory for every soldier who looks up to the Fluorspar as an idol, a mentor, a beacon of possibilities.

Titania chooses her, and she lets her impossible dreams of Dexter and his massive wingspan fade as Titania proves to be the best partner she could have ever wanted. They are an exceptional match, and together they  _ thrive _ . Vanessa makes junior knight, and sets her eyes on senior knight, on captaincy, on command positions that will take her higher. Every time she and Titania take to the air, she thinks she is one step closer. One mission closer. 

One inch closer, to standing as an equal to the Fluorspar herself, her idol. The woman who stands as a hero, to Vanessa. She’s one step closer, to being her equal.

(War breaks out, and dreams across the continent are shattered.)


End file.
